Nana Patekar turns down offer by BJP to contest against Congress’ Priya Dutt

Hindi film actor Nana Patekar has reportedly turned down an offer by the BJP to contest the upcoming 2014 General Elections from Mumbai North Central constituency against Congress’ Priya Dutt.

As per reports in a leading daily, Nana Patekar was one of the actors who was approached by the BJP to take on the Congress MP.

Priya Dutt is the sister of Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt and daughter of legendary actor Sunil Dutt, who was a Congress leader and an MP from the Mumbai North Central constituency. Priya started contesting from the seat after her father’s death.

She won this seat in 2009 by defeating Mahesh Jethmalani, BJP leader and lawyer.

Meanwhile, the daily also quoted a senior BJP functionary as saying that they were in touch with other people from the Hindi film industry to fight the Lok Sabha polls. Mumbai has six Lok Sabha seats and Maharashtra in total has 48 seats.

The BJP has an alliance with the Shiv Sena in the state.

BJP prime ministerial candidate for 2014 General Elections, Narendra Modi, held a mega rally in Mumbai on December 22 last year. This was his first rally after being nominated as his party’s PM candidate in September last year.